New Delhi: Two members of the five-judges Collegium of the Supreme Court are learnt to have put forth their reservation to provide written consent to a proposal for the appointment of four judges in the Supreme Court, sources said on Wednesday. Chief Justice of India (CJI) Uday Umesh Lalit-led five-member collegium has recently recommended elevation of Chief Justice of Bombay High Court, Justice Dipankar Datta, as a judge of the apex court and discussions on few other names for remaining four vacancies in the top court had purportedly taken place in the collegium's deliberations.
Besides the CJI, four senior judges - justices D Y Chandrachud, S K Kaul, S A Nazeer and K M Joseph - are part of the five-member collegium which selects and recommends to the Centre the names of judges for elevation in the apex court. According to sources, the collegium meeting could not take place on September 30, the last working day before the Dussehra vacation, as one of the collegium members was unavailable. The apex court is scheduled to reopen on October 10.
Later, a proposal was purportedly sent seeking a written nod of collegium member judges for elevation of three high court chief justices and one senior advocate to the top court, they said. According to the convention, the collegium members sign the resolutions after discussing probable names for appointment and elevation of judges in higher judiciary. Two members of the collegium are learnt to have some reservation on holding the collegium meeting by circulation by breaking the convention of having physical discussions and giving consent in writing to such proposals, the sources said.
Besides senior advocate K V Viswanthan, the names of justices Ravi Shankar Jha, Sanjay Karol and P V Sanjay Kumar, chief justices of Punjab and Haryana, Patna and Manipur high courts respectively, have been purportedly sent to the collegium member for their consent. Earlier, the collegium headed by the CJI, on September 30, issued statements recommending names of three high court judges, Justice Jaswant Singh, Justice P B Varale, and Ali Mohammad Magrey, for elevation as chief justices of Orissa, Karnataka, and Jammu and Kashmir high courts respectively.
It also recommended to the Centre the transfer of Chief Justice (CJ) of Orissa High Court, Justice S Muralidhar, and Chief Justice of Jammu and Kashmir High Court Justice Pankaj Mithal as CJs of Madras and Rajasthan high courts respectively. It had also recommended the transfer of three judges of high courts. Prior to this, the apex court collegium recommended the elevation of Chief Justice of Bombay High Court, Justice Datta, as a judge of the apex court. On September 12, the CJI Lalit-led collegium approved the appointment of 20 judges to the high courts of Punjab and Haryana, Bombay, and Karnataka. (PTI)
